This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

Women Against Rape will be hoisting our banner on the Mothers March and taking part in the Speak-out, naming our work of fighting for justice for ourselves, our daughters and other rape survivors.

It is hard enough to survive after rape and sexual assault. We are determined not to see our vital caring work made even more difficult and painful by cuts to vital services and benefits.

Life-saving resources such as social security benefits, refuges and legal aid, essential to escaping violent relationships, are being taken away from traumatised survivors. Poverty and job losses are making women and children more dependent on men and therefore more vulnerable. For those of us who are asylum seekers, the threat of violence is magnified – we are often destitute or in detention, easy targets for rape and racist attacks. Many are separated from our children.

Some of the women who’ll be marching say:
“Over 90% of rapists go free. Instead of prosecuting the men who have attacked us, women are being wrongly accused of making false allegations and sent to jail – even mothers. Gail Sherwood, a mother of three, was sentenced to two years; Leyla Ibrahim was pregnant when she was sent down for three years; her baby was born in prison. Both are innocent are we are determined to clear their names. These miscarriage of justice must stop.”

“My 15-year-old daughter was raped. As mothers our job is to protect our children and in my mind I hadn’t. I left court with my emotions all over the place and an awful feeling that something had gone terribly wrong with the whole legal process; the injustice my daughter had suffered at the hands of the authorities seemed as bad as the rape itself. I met WAR and together we fought on. We managed to get four officers disciplined – something practically unheard of.”

“I was raped two years ago. The police were terrible. I had cuts and bruising to my face, chin, neck, breasts, back and arms, and yet they said it was consensual. Women Against Rape has kept me alive and sane. But cuts to funding will make it even harder to get support when we’re raped or abused.”

“I am a childhood abuse and rape survivor. I live in Hitchin. I am going, along with many others, to make visible the experiences of mothers and other carers who are rape survivors, or whose children are.”

“I tried to get my ex-partner rapist prosecuted. But the investigation and the trial were biased against me. The police had labelled me as someone who had assaulted one of their own and they held this against me. Actually, they had assaulted me. As a result of their negligence, my rapist walked free. Legal aid enabled me to sue the police for assault and wrongful arrest. Without it only the rich can get justice, no one else can afford it.”

“My daughter is trying to get out of a violent and controlling relationship. The cuts may deny her and her son a refuge place, or the after school club if she is forced out to work and needs childcare. She will need legal aid to get protection when the father insists on seeing his son as an excuse for gaining access to her. I fear for her and for my grandson because of the cuts.”

“I left my three precious children in Rwanda after soldiers killed my husband and tortured me. I knew they would be safer without me, so I fled alone. After nine years, I won the right to stay in the UK. I’m fighting for my children, now 15, 18 and 20, to join me, but so far we’ve been refused. As mothers we know that separation from our children causes untold grief and suffering to them and therefore to us. For all our sakes, we are determined to put an end to it, and win the justice we’re owed.”